Delightfully Ridiculous

Poetry

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly –

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

Oh my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

— Sylvia Plath (27 October 1962)

Today I got the poppies tattooed. I had vaguely remembered the poem but not that the month was October. And, you know, Plath wrote that on her last birthday alive. Her 30th birthday.

I hadn’t looked up the poem before I got the tattoo. I turn 30 next week.

xx xx

I am, of course, just overthinking this all. It’s just a strange strange coincidence. Also, I am not even in the slightest bit suicidal. So there’s that.

This tattoo, oh, it hurt so bad. SO bad. I hadn’t had my hip tattooed since October 2010 and yeah, there was a reason it took me three years to get the nerve to get another hip tattoo.

Both Victor and Simon Morse complimented me on how well I sit while getting tattooed. Like the terminator, apparently, I just shut down and don’t move. It’s not the most useful talent to have, but I will take it.

But I think my favourite moment was when Victor asked how old I was and, after being told I was a week away from 30, had me repeat myself and then told me he thought I was 23. This baby face of mine is both a blessing and a curse.

And the sunlight sidled, like dewdrops, like dandled diamondsFrom The Furl of Fresh-Leaved Dogrose Down

It only took two and a bit years but I finally finally finally found a book his poetry for sale. Previously? I danced around Shakespeare & Co in Paris with a thin worn tome in my hands before finally realising that it was essays about Hopkins’ work and life (he was a jesuit priest and his poems were never published in his lifetime, I don’t think he ever intended them to be published at all!) and nearly crumpling down right then and there.

His poem Spring is one of the two poems I know by heart, word for word, beginning to end.

Nothing is so beautiful as spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginningIn Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

The other poem I know off by heart? Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll!

One, two! One, two! and through and throughThe vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. CrownedWith lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,A formula, a phrase remains, — but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curledIs the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.